I've been saying so for nearly thirty years now. Anyone who knows me knows how I feel about homework. Just another brick in the wall. He he he. So my husband made me happy when he came home and reported that he had printed and posted in the teachers' lounge at school an article from Time magazine by Claudia Wallis citing research which says that homework not only does not help kids, it usually does more harm than good. She reviews two books, The Homework Myth (Da Capo Press; 243 pages), by Alfie Kohn and The Case Against Homework (Crown; 290 pages), by Sarah Bennett and Nancy Kalish.
Here's the link:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1376208,00.html
And an excerpt of my favorite parts (emphasis mine):
Both books cite studies, surveys, statistics, along with some hair-raising anecdotes, on how a rising tide of dull, useless assignments is oppressing families and making kids hate learning. A few highlights from the books and my own investigation:
• The onslaught comes despite the fact that an exhaustive review by the nation's top homework scholar, Duke University's Harris Cooper, concluded that homework does not measurably improve academic achievement for kids in grade school. That's right: all the sweat and tears do not make Johnny a better reader or mathematician.
• Too much homework brings diminishing returns. Cooper's analysis of dozens of studies found that kids who do some homework in middle and high school score somewhat better on standardized tests, but doing more than 60 to 90 min. a night in middle school and more than 2 hr. in high school is associated with, gulp, lower scores.
"It's one thing to say we are wasting kids' time and straining parent-kid relationships," Kohn told me, "but what's unforgivable is if homework is damaging our kids' interest in learning, undermining their curiosity."
I will add, though, that for the most part I think CCS does much better than many other schools regarding homework. I've been pleasantly surprised at the amount Ethan has had for middle school, finding it quite "doable" even with his football schedule. 2nd grade homework schedule is very realistic in my opinion. Now, 4th grade I would say is definitely the exception. 5th grade questionable, but it seems more palatable having just come out of the 4th grade onslought.
Another interesting link:
http://www.stophomework.com/
Finally! I found the same to be true in my classroom, when I was teaching, but no one really believed me. It always seemed like such a waste of everyone's time to me. If a child hasn't mastered the content IN the classroom, with the teacher present, then what child is going to master it AWAY from the classroom? This is especially true with lower economic groups. We talk about raising expectations an making classrooms more rigorous, but what really happens is kids are being given lots of busy work and sent home to environments that are hostile to learning. As a result, the kids hate learning and can't wait to be free of school's oppressive yoke.
A fair compromise, and one that doesn't jeopardize learning, is to have a set agenda or learning goal for the day. If the kids are off-task and class is dragging, give them the remainder of the work to take home and review it the next day with a quiz or something like that. If they are on task and appear to be soaking it up, send them home with a pat on the back and tell them to go have fun.
It seems that we've lost track of what school is supposed to do for our children.
Thanks for the links. I'll step down from my soapbox now.
I had never thought about this, but it seems completely plausible. In grade school, I loved learning. I loved my in-class assignments. And I loved the challenges lying ahead of me.
Around 4th grade, I started getting homework, and my interest waned. By junior high, I was completely bored with school, and saw no use spending my freetime doing homework after I just spent 7 hours in school. My grades begin to slip during this time too.
I didn't recover academically until 11th grade when I begin to feel challenged in the classroom again. Outside assignments weren't a drag in high school, but rather a way to get closer to the material discussed in class. (I also switched to a better school in 11th grade, so go figure)
Posted by: davidm at Octubre 17, 2006 10:16 AMKaren: your suggestion is not far off from what the CCS middle school does. Check it out by clicking on the faculty listings on the school's website, where they post the agenda for the week. Each teacher is required to post 2 things: TLW: (the learner will:) with the goal to be accomplished for that day's class time and HW: with the homework for that evening. With the exception of math, much of Ethan's assignments have been to finish classwork that didn't get done.
David: Your experience sounds very similar to mine. I have always loved learning, especially reading. I started reading very early and got good at it quick. The school's response? Give her more to do to keep her busy. "You're in the 2nd grade reading at a 7th grade level? Good, we'll require you to do 7th grade work." HELLO! Whatever happened to, "Great job! Since you've accomplished what you needed to, why don't you pick out a book of your choice and read quietly while the others finish?" And then there was summer reading. That pretty much ended my desire to read. At least until I got in to college and had a lot more choice in what I studied and where there is much less busy work. I barely graduated from high school, where so much of the grades were based on daily assignments. I thrived in college where as long as I mastered the material and did well on the exams, I was rewarded with a good grade.
I saw a similar pattern with my oldest son Ethan. 4th grade is the year at CCS where I feel homework is unreasonable. Ethan has always loved school. He loves to learn. In 3rd grade we had several times where he actually lied to us about being sick, saying he was fine, because he didn't want to miss school (but the fever of 102 tipped us off). 4th grade he complained of some ailment every week which he felt required him to stay home from school. He hated school. He wanted to quit. Once he moved on to 5th grade where the homework was more reasonable, his attitude toward school improved again. Now, in middle school, the homework has been very minimal and he LOVES school again. He's reading more this year, too, and this is the first year they have not been required to earn a certain number of AR points per quarter.
I'm a firm believer that most (not all) kids come in to the world with an innate desire to learn. I think we teach them to not want to learn when we try to force them to learn in ways which are not compatible with their learning style, and when we couple with learning a bunch of useless busy work which teaches them nothing. It's the busy work, not the learning, that has made "educational" such a dirty word to kids.
Man, teaching K in the ATL w/undereducated, underopportunitied parents all I got from them was questions about why I don't give more homework. In KINDERGARTEN! I made it a daily assignment for the kids to be read to for 20 minutes each weekday. Even freakin' said looking through a magazine OR JUNK MAIL LIKE PIZZA COUPONS would count if they had nothing else or no one w/the time to read to them. The freakin' parents wouldn't do that, but would complain about needing more "real" homework. Brainwashed. They want so badly for their kids to be better educated than themselves but have no idea how to really make that happen.
Posted by: lynnp at Octubre 22, 2006 03:22 PM